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WlTHOt/T 


BY 

EDWARD  E.  HALE. 


41  <There  cannot  be  a  man 
who  loves  the  old tfla<j  as 
3.  do,  or  prays  for  it  as  I 
do,  or  hopes  for  it  as  Ida." 
39- 


ff 


THE  MAN  WITHOUT 
A  COUNTRY. 


BY 

EDWARD    E.    HALE. 


•oJOJc 


BOSTON: 

J.  STILMAN  SMITH  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS. 

3  HAMILTON  PLACE. 

1891. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  trie  year  1888,  by 

J.    STILMAN   SMITH   &   COMPANY, 
in  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington. 


TYPOGRAPHY  BY  J.  S.  GUSHING  &  Co.,  BOSTON. 


PREFACE. 


IT  is  difficult  for  young  readeis  of  the  pres 
ent  generation  to  understand  or  to  imagine 
what  was  the  condition  of  public  feeling  in 
many  parts  of  the  United  States,  at  different 
periods  in  the  Civil  War,  which  lasted  from 
1 86 1  to  1865. 

In  the  year  1863,  a  great  deal  of  distrust 
expressed  itself,  even  in  some  of  the  northern 
states,  as  to  whether  it  were  worth  while  for 
the  North  to  make  the  sacrifices  it  was  mak 
ing.  In  the  state  of  Ohio,  a  prominent  states 
man  expressed  himself  with  such  contempt  as 
to  the  national  government,  that  General  Burn- 
side,  who  was  in  command  of  the  national 
army  in  that  region,  sent  him  over  the  lines 
to  the  rebels,  saying  that  he  seemed  to  belong 
with  them,  rather  than  in  his  own  country. 
It  was  in  that  summer  that  I  wrote  the  story 


iv  PREFACE. 

which  is  in  the  reader's  hands.  My  wish  was 
simply  the  wish  to  show  what  one's  Country 
is,  and  what  her  claims  are,  without  any  refer 
ence  to  any  of  the  other  questions  which  were 
involved  in  the  Civil  War.  I  tried  to  interest 
my  readers  in  a  hero  of  whom  they  should 
know  little,  except  that  he  had  no  country, 
having  forfeited  the  birth-right  which  all  other 
men  have. 

To  give  this  hero  a  name,  and  to  surround 
him  with  circumstances  which  were  in  the  least 
probable,  I  connected  him  with  the  movement, 
still  mysterious,  of  Aaron  Burr,  near  the  be 
ginning  of  this  century.  I  supposed  him  to 
be  an  officer  of  the  army  of  the  country  which 
he  disowned.  And,  in  the  slight  historical 
references  to  Burr  and  his  undertaking,  what 
ever  it  was,  which  will  be  found  in  the  begin 
ning,  I  followed  the  truth  of  history. 

I  wanted  a  name  for  the  hero  which  was 
familiar  at  that  time  in  the  Southwest.  I  re 
membered  a  young  man,  named  Nolan,  who 
was  the  correspondent  and  friend  of  James 
Wilkinson,  who  was  the  general  in  command 


PREFACE.  V 

of  the  United  States  army  at  the  time  Burr 
was  arrested.  James  Wilkinson  was  a  traitor 
to  his  country;  and  a  traitor  to  Burr  also,  as 
I  believe.  That  is,  I  think  that  he  had  given 
Burr  encouragement  that  he  would  join  him 
in  his  plan,  whatever  it  was.  But  when  the 
moment  came,  he  took  measures  for  the  ar 
rest  of  Burr,  and  disowned  him.  With  that 
matter,  however,  this  story  has  nothing  to  do. 
In  seeking  a  name  for  my  hero,  I  remembered 
Wilkinson's  correspondent,  Nolan,  and,  as  it 
happened,  I  thought  his  name  was  "  Stephen 
Nolan."  He  is  so  spoken  of  in  my  story,  and 
the  reader  will  find  that  the  hero  of  this  book 
alludes  to  Stephen  Nolan  and  to  his  death  in 
Texas. 

Long  after  the  story  was  first  published,  I 
found  that  the  real  name  of  the  true  Nolan 
was  Philip,  not  Stephen.  He  was  an  adven 
turer,  who  was  killed  near  Waco,  in  Texas,  by 
the  Spaniards  in  1801.  I  had  made  a  mistake 
in  calling  him  Stephen,  and  I  had  transferred 
his  name,  to  be  the  name  of  the  imaginary 
person  whom  I  had  created.  To  this  care- 


VI  PREFACE. 

lessness  or  accident,  I  have  owed  a  large  cor 
respondence,  very  interesting  and  instructive 
to  me,  with  the  relatives  of  the  real  "  Philip 
Nolan"  and  others.  I  have  his  portrait,  as  it 
was  painted  in  a  miniature  for  the  lady  whom 
he  married.  In  another  book,  called  "Philip 
Nolan's  Friends,"  I  have  given  truly  the  out 
lines  of  his  tragic  history.  But  his  connection 
with  my  Philip  Nolan  was  a  mere  accident. 
The  Philip  Nolan  of  the  book  in  the  reader's 
hands  is  an  imaginary  character,  who  was 
created  for  the  single  purpose  of  teaching 
young  Americans  what  it  is  to  have  a  coun 
try,  what  is  the  duty  which  they  owe  to  that 
country,  and  how  central  that  duty  is  among 
all  the  duties  of  their  lives.  I  was  glad  to 
find,  when  the  story  was  published,  that  this 
moral  was  appreciated.  I  have  many  letters, 
which  I  prize  highly,  from  persons  who  were 
before  strangers  to  me,  who  read  it  in  dreary 
watches  at  sea,  or  by  the  light  of  camp-fires 
on  shore,  when  they  were  risking  their  lives 
for  the  country  which  had  the  right  to  claim 
their  service,  and  which  did  not  assert  that 


PREFACE.  Vll 

right  in  vain.  I  have  a  memorandum  of  the 
death  of  "  Philip  Nolan,"  a  black  man  from 
Louisiana,  to  whom  that  war  gave  a  country, 
and  who  laid  down  his  life  for  her  on  the 
banks  of  the  James  River.  I  suppose  that 
this  "  Philip  Nolan  "  was  named  from  the  same 
Philip  Nolan  who  gave  a  name  to  my  hero. 
I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  that  my 
Philip  Nolan  has  made  many  friends  in  all 
parts  of  this  nation.  And  now  that  the  story 
is  printed  as  a  school-book,  I  dedicate  it  to 
the  boys  and  girls  who  also  are  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  with  the  hope  which  Philip 
Nolan  expressed  to  Frederick  Ingham  when 
he  was  a  midshipman,  and  with  the  injunction 
which  he  gave  to  that  boy :  — 

"  For  your  country,  boy,  and  for  that  flag, 
never  dream  a  dream  but  of  serving  her,  as 
she  bids  you,  though  the  service  carry  you 
through  a  thousand  hells.  No  matter  what 
happens  to  you,  no  matter  who  flatters  you  or 
who  abuses  you,  never  look  at  another  flag ; 
never  let  a  night  pass  but  you  pray  God  to 
bless  that  flag.  Remember,  boy,  that  behind 


Vlll  PREFACE. 

all  these  men  you  have  to  do  with,  behind 
officers  and  government,  the  people  even,  there 
is  the  Country  Herself,  your  Country,  and  that 
you  belong  to  Her,  as  you  belong  to  your  own 
mother.  Stand  by  Her,  boy,  as  you  would 
stand  by  your  mother,  if  those  devils  there 
had  got  hold  of  her  to-day.  O  if  anybody 
had  said  so  to  me  when  I  was  your  age ! " 


THE  MAN  WITHOUT  A  COUNTRY. 


I   SUPPOSE  that  very  few  casual  readers  of 
the    New    York   Herald  of    August    I3th 
observed,    in    an    obscure    corner    among    the 
"Deaths,"  the  announcement, — 

"  NOLAN.  Died,  on  board  U.  S.  Corvette  Levant,  Lat. 
2°  11'  S.,  Long.  131°  W.,  on  the  nth  of  May,  PHILIP 
NOLAN." 

I  happened  to  observe  it,  because  I  was 
stranded  at  the  old  Mission-House  in  Mackinaw, 
waiting  for  a  Lake  Superior  steamer  which  did 
not  choose  to  come,  and  I  was  devouring  to  the 
very  stubble  all  the  current  literature  I  could 
get  hold  of,  even  down  to  the  deaths  and  mar 
riages  in  the  Herald.  My  memory  for  names 
and  people  is  good,  and  the  reader  will  see,  as 
he  goes  on,  that  I  had  reason  enough  to  remem 
ber  Philip  Nolan.  There  are  hundreds  of 
readers  who  would  have  paused  at  that  an 
nouncement,  if  the  officer  of  the  Levant  who 
reported  it  had  chosen  to  make  it  thus  :  —  "  Died, 
May  nth,  THE  MAN  WITHOUT  A  COUNTRY." 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

For  it  was  as  "  The  Man  without  a  Country  " 
that  poor  Philip  Nolan  had  generally  been 
known  by  the  officers  who  had  him  in  charge 
during  some  fifty  years,  as,  indeed,  by  all  men 
who  sailed  under  them.  I  dare  say  there  is 
many  a  man  who  has  taken  wine  with  him  once 
a  fortnight,  in  a  three  years'  cruise,  who  never 
knew  that  his  name  was  "Nolan,"  or  whether 
the  poor  wretch  had  any  name  at  all. 

There  can  now  be  no  possible  harm  in  telling 
this  poor  creature's  story.  Reason  enough  there 
has  been  till  now,  ever  since  Madison's  adminis 
tration  went  out  in  1817,  for  very  strict  secrecy, 
the  secrecy  of  honor  itself,  among  the  gentle 
men  of  the  navy  who  have  had  Nolan  in  succes 
sive  charge.  And  certainly  it  speaks  well  for 
the  esprit  de  corps  of  the  profession,  and  the 
personal  honor  of  its  members,  that  to  the 
press  this  man's  story  has  been  wholly  unknown, 
—  and,  I  think,  to  the  country  at  large  also.  I 
have  reason  to  think,  from  some  investigations 
I  made  in  the  Naval  Archives  when  I  was 
attached  to  the  Bureau  of  Construction,  that 
every  official  report  relating  to  him  was  burned 
when  Ross  burned  the  public  buildings  at 
Washington.  One  of  the  Tuckers,  or  possibly 
one  of  the  Watsons,  had  Nolan  in  charge  at  the 
end  of  the  war;  and  when,  on  returning  from 
his  cruise,  he  reported  at  Washington  to  one  of 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  3 

the  Crowninshields,  —  who  was  in  the  Navy 
Department  when  he  came  home,  —  he  found 
that  the  Department  ignored  the  whole  business. 
Whether  they  really  knew  nothing  about  it  or 
whether  it  was  a  "  Non  mi  recordo,"  determined 
on  as  a  piece  of  policy,  I  do  not  know.  But 
this  I  do  know,  that  since  1817,  and  possibly 
before,  no  naval  officer  has  mentioned  Nolan  in 
his  report  of  a  cruise. 

But,  as  I  say,  there  is  no  need  for  secrecy  any 
longer.  And  now  the  poor  creature  is  dead, 
it  seems  to  me  worth  while  to  tell  a  little  of 
his  story,  by  way  of  showing  young  Americans 
of  to-day  what  it  is  to  be  A  MAN  WITHOUT  A 
COUNTRY. 

Philip  Nolan  was  as  fine  a  young  officer  as 
there  was  in  the  "  Legion  of  the  West,"  as  the 
Western  division  of  our  army  was  then  called. 
When  Aaron  Burr  made  his  first  dashing  ex 
pedition  down  to  New  Orleans  in  1805,  at  Fort 
Massac,  or  somewhere  above  on  the  river,  he 
met,  as  the  Devil  would  have  it,  this  gay,  dash 
ing,  bright  young  fellow,  at  some  dinner-party, 
I  think.  Burr  marked  him,  talked  to  him, 
walked  with  him,  took  him  a  day  or  two's  voy 
age  in  his  flat-boat,  and,  in  short,  fascinated 
him.  For  the  next  year,  barrack-life  was  very 
tame  to  poor  Nolan.  He  occasionally  availed 


4  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

himself  of  the  permission  the  great  man  had 
given  him  to  write  to  him.  Long,  high-worded, 
stilted  letters  the  poor  boy  wrote  and  rewrote 
and  copied.  But  never  a  line  did  he  have  in 
reply  from  the  gay  deceiver.  The  other  boys 
in  the  garrison  sneered  at  him,  because  he  sac 
rificed  in  this  unrequited  affection  for  a  politician 
the  time  which  they  devoted  to  Monongahela, 
hazard,  and  high-low-jack.  Bourbon,  euchre, 
and  poker  were  still  unknown.  But  one  day 
Nolan  had  his  revenge.  This  time  Burr  came 
down  the  river,  not  as  an  attorney  seeking  a 
place  for  his  office,  but  as  a  disguised  conqueror. 
He  had  defeated  I  know  not  how  many  district- 
attorneys  ;  he  had  dined  at  I  know  not  how 
many  public  dinners  ;  he  had  been  heralded  in 
I  know  not  how  many  Weekly  Arguses,  and  it 
was  rumored  that  he  had  an  army  behind  him 
and  an  empire  before  him.  It  was  a  great  day 
—  his  arrival  —  to  poor  Nolan.  Burr  had  not 
been  at  the  fort  an  hour  before  he  sent  for  him. 
That  evening  he  asked  Nolan  to  take  him  out 
in  his  skiff,  to  show  him  a  canebrake  or  a  cotton- 
wood  tree,  as  he  said,  —  really  to  seduce  him  ; 
and  by  the  time  the  sail  was  over,  Nolan  was 
enlisted  body  and  soul.  From  that  time,  though 
he  did  not  yet  know  it,  he  lived  as  A  MAN  WITH 
OUT  A  COUNTRY. 

What  Burr  meant  to  do  I  know  no  more  than 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  5 

you,  dear  reader.  It  is  none  of  our  business 
just  now.  Only,  when  the  grand  catastrophe 
came,  and  Jefferson  and  the  House  of  Virginia 
of  that  day  undertook  to  break  on  the  wheel  all 
the  possible  Clarences  of  the  then  House  of 
York,  by  the  great  treason-trial  at  Richmond, 
some  of  the  lesser  fry  in  that  distant  Mississippi 
Valley,  which  was  farther  from  us  than  Puget's 
Sound  is  to-day,  introduced  the  like  novelty  on 
their  provincial  stage,  and,  to  while  away  the 
monotony  of  the  summer  at  Fort  Adams,  got 
up,  for  spectacles,  a  string  of  court-martials  on 
the  officers  there.  One  and  another  of  the 
colonels  and  majors  were  tried,  and,  to  fill  out 
the  list,  little  Nolan,  against  whom,  Heaven 
knows,  there  was  evidence  enough, —  that  he 
was  sick  of  the  service,  had  been  willing  to  be 
false  to  it,  and  would  have  obeyed  any  order  to 
march  any-whither  with  any  one  who  would 
follow  him  had  the  order  been  signed,  "By 
command  of  His  Exc.  A.  Burr."  The  courts 
dragged  on.  The  big  flies  escaped,  —  rightly 
for  all  I  know.  Nolan  was  proved  guilty 
enough,  as  I  say ;  yet  you  and  I  would  never 
have  heard  of  him,  reader,  but  that,  when  the 
president  of  the  court  asked  him  at  the  close, 
whether  he  wished  to  say  anything  to  show 
that  he  had  always  been  faithful  to  the  United 
States,  he  cried  out,  in  a  fit  of  frenzy,  — 


6  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

"  D — n  the  United  States !  I  wish  I  may 
never  hear  of  the  United  States  again  !  " 

I  suppose  he  did  not  know  how  the  words 
shocked  old  Colonel  Morgan,  who  was  holding 
the  court.  Half  the  officers  who  sat  in  it  had 
served  through  the  Revolution,  and  their  lives, 
not  to  say  their  necks,  had  been  risked  for  the 
very  idea  which  he  so  cavalierly  cursed  in  his 
madness.  He,  on  his  part,  had  grown  up  in  the 
West  of  those  days,  in  the  midst  of  "  Spanish 
plot,"  "  Orleans  plot,"  and  all  the  rest.  He  had 
been  educated  on  a  plantation  where  the  finest 
company  was  a  Spanish  officer  or  a  French  mer 
chant  from  Orleans.  His  education,  such  as  it 
was,  had  been  perfected  in  commercial  expedi 
tions  to  Vera  Cruz,  and  I  think  he  told  me  his 
father  once  hired  an  Englishman  to  be  a  private 
tutor  for  a  winter  on  the  plantation.  He  had 
spent  half  his  youth  with  an  older  brother,  hunt 
ing  horses  in  Texas ;  and,  in  a  word,  to  him 
"  United  States  "  was  scarcely  a  reality.  Yet 
he  had  been  fed  by  "  United  States  "  for  all  the 
years  since  he  had  been  in  the  army.  He  had 
sworn  on  his  faith  as  a  Christian  to  be  true  to 
"United  States."  It  was  "United  States" 
which  gave  him  the  uniform  he  wore,  and  the 
sword  by  his  side.  Nay,  my  poor  Nolan,  it  was 
only  because  "  United  States  "  had  picked  you 
out  first  as  one  of  her  own  confidential  men  of 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  / 

honor  that  "  A.  Burr"  cared  for  you  a  straw  more 
than  for  the  flat-boat  men  who  sailed  his  ark  for 
him.  I  do  not  excuse  Nolan  ;  I  only  explain  to 
the  reader  why  he  damned  his  countfy,  and 
wished  he  might  never  hear  her  name  again. 

He  never  did  hear  her  name  but  once  again. 
From  that  moment,  September  23,  1807,  till  the 
day  he  died,  May  11,  1863,  he  never  heard  her 
name  again.  For  that  half-century  and  more 
he  was  a  man  without  a  country. 

Old  Morgan,  as  I  said,  was  terribly  shocked. 
If  Nolan  had  compared  George  Washington  to 
Benedict  Arnold,  or  had  cried,  "  God  save  King 
George,"  Morgan  would  not  have  felt  worse. 
He  called  the  court  into  his  private  room,  and 
returned  in  fifteen  minutes,  with  a  face  like  a 
sheet,  to  say,  — 

"  Prisoner,  hear  the  sentence  of  the  Court ! 
The  Court  decides,  subject  to  the  approval  of 
the  President,  that  you  never  hear  the  name  of 
the  United  States  again." 

Nolan  laughed.  But  nobody  else  laughed. 
Old  Morgan  was  too  solemn,  and  the  whole 
room  was  hushed  dead  as  night  for  a  minute. 
Fven  Nolan  lost  his  swagger  in  a  moment. 
Then  Morgan  added,  — 

"  Mr.  Marshal,  take  the  prisoner  to  Orleans 
in  an  armed  boat,  and  deliver  him  to  the  naval 
commander  there." 


O  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

The  Marshal  gave  his  orders,  and  the  pris 
oner  was  taken  out  of  court. 

"Mr.  Marshal,"  continued  old  Morgan,  "see 
that  no  one  mentions  the  United  States  to  the 
prisoner.  Mr.  Marshal,  make  my  respects  to 
Lieutenant  Mitchell  at  Orleans,  and  request 
him  to  order  that  no  one  shall  mention  the 
United  States  to  the  prisoner  while  he  is  on 
board  ship.  You  will  receive  your  written  or 
ders  from  the  officer  on  duty  here  this  evening. 
The  court  is  adjourned  without  day." 

I  have  always  supposed  that  Colonel  Morgan 
himself  took  the  proceedings  of  "the  court  to 
Washington  City,  and  explained  them  to  Mr. 
Jefferson.  Certain  it  is  that  the  President  ap 
proved  them,  —  certain,  that  i6,  if  I  may  believe 
the  men  who  say  they  have  seen  his  signature. 
Before  the  Nautilus  got  round  from  New  Or 
leans  to  the  Northern  Atlantic  coast  with  the 
prisoner  on  board  the  sentence  had  been  ap 
proved,  and  he  was  a  man  without  a  country. 

The  plan  then  adopted  was  substantially  the 
same  which  was  necessarily  followed  ever  after. 
Perhaps  it  was  suggested  by  the  necessity  of 
sending  him  by  water  from  Fort  Adams  and 
Orleans.  The  Secretary  of  the  Navy  —  it 
must  have  been  the  first  Crowninshield,  though 
he  is  a  man  I  do  not  remember  —  was  requested 
to  put  Nolan  on  board  a  government  vessel 


THE    MAX    NYITllOUT    A   COUNTRY.  9 

bound  on  a  long  cruise,  and  to  direct  that  he 
should  be  only  so  far  confined  there  as  to  make 
it  certain  that  he  never  saw  or  heard  of  the 
country.  We  had  few  long  cruises  then,  and 
the  navy  was  very  much  out  of  favor ;  and  as 
almost  all  of  this  story  is  traditional,  as  I  have 
explained,  I  do  not  know  certainly  what  his 
first  cruise  was.  But  the  commander  to  whom 
he  was  intrusted,  —  perhaps  it  was  Tingey  or 
Shaw,  though  I  think  it  was  one  of  the  younger 
men,  —  we  are  all  old  enough  now,  —  regulated 
the  etiquette  and  the  precautions  of  the  affair, 
and  according  to  his  scheme  they  were  carried 
out,  I  suppose,  till  Nolan  died. 

When  I  was  second  officer  of  the  Intrepid, 
some  thirty  years  after,  I  saw  the  original  paper 
of  instructions.  I  have  been  sorry  ever  since 
that  I  did  not  copy  the  whole  of  it.  It  ran, 
however,  much  in  this  way  :  — 

"WASHINGTON  (with  a  date,  which 
must  have  been  late  in  1807). 

"  SIR,  —  You  will  receive  from  Lieutenant 
Neale  the  person  of  Philip  Nolan,  late  a  Lieu 
tenant  in  the  United  States  Army. 

"This  person   on    his    trial    by  court-martial- 
expressed  with  an  oath  the  wish  that   he  might 
'never  hear  of  the  United  States  again.' 

"  The  Court  sentenced  him  to  have  his  wish 
fulfilled. 


IO      THE  MAN  WITHOUT  A  COUNTRY 

"  For  the  present,  the  execution  of  the  order  is 
intrusted  by  the  President  to  this  Department. 

"  You  will  take  the  prisoner  on  board  your 
ship,  and  keep  him  there  with  such  precautions 
as  shall  prevent  his  escape. 

"  You  will  provide  him  with  such  quarters, 
rations,  and  clothing  as  would  be  proper  for  an 
officer  of  his  late  rank,  if  he  were  a  passenger 
on  your  vessel  on  the  business  of  his  Govern 
ment. 

"  The  gentlemen  on  board  will  make  any 
arrangements  agreeable  to  themselves  regard 
ing  his  society.  He  is  to  be  exposed  to  no 
indignity  of  any  kind,  nor  is  he  ever  unneces 
sarily  to  be  reminded  that  he  is  a  prisoner. 

"  But  under  no  circumstances  is  he  ever  to 
hear  of  his  country  or  to  see  any  information 
regarding  it ;  and  you  will  specially  caution  all 
the  officers  under  your  command  to  take  care, 
that,  in  the  various  indulgences  which  may  be 
granted,  this  rule,  in  which  his  punishment  is 
involved,  shall  not  be  broken. 

"  It  is  the  intention  of  the  Government  that 
he  shall  never  again  see  the  country  which  he 
has  disowned.  Before  the  end  of  your  cruise 
you  will  receive  orders  which  will  give  effect  to 
this  intention. 

"  Respectfully  yours, 

"W.  SOUTHARD, 

"  For  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy." 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  II 

If  I  had  only  preserved  the  whole  of  this 
paper,  there  would  be  no  break  in  the  beginning 
of  my  sketch  of  this  story.  For  Captain  Shaw, 
if  it  were  he,  handed  it  to  his  successor  in  the 
charge,  and  he  to  his,  and  I  suppose  the  com 
mander  of  the  Levant  has  it  to-day  as  his  au 
thority  for  keeping  this  man  in  this  mild  cus 
tody. 

The  rule  adopted  on  board  the  ships  on 
which  I  have  met  "the  man  without  a  country'' 
was,  I  think,  transmitted  from  the  beginning. 
No  mess  liked  to  have  him  permanently,  be 
cause  his  presence  cut  off  all  talk  of  home  or  of 
the  prospect  of  return,  of  politics  or  letters,  of 
peace  or  of  war,  —  cut  off  more  than  half  the 
talk  men  liked  to  have  at  sea.  But  it  was 
always  thought  too  hard  that  he  should  never 
meet  the  rest  of  us,  except  to  touch  hats,  and 
we  finally  sank  into  one  system.  He  was  not 
permitted  to  talk  with  the  men,  unless  an 
officer  was  by.  With  officers  he  had  unre 
strained  intercourse,  as  far  as  they  and  he 
chose.  But  he  grew  shy,  though  he  had  favor 
ites  :  I  was  one.  Then  the  captain  always 
asked  him  to  dinner  on  Monday.  Every  mess 
in  succession  took  up  the  invitation  in  its  turn. 
According  to  the  size  of  the  ship,  you  had 
him  at  your  mess  more  or  less  often  at  dinner. 
His  breakfast  he  ate  in  his  own  state-room,  — • 


12  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

he  always  had  a  state-room,  — which  was  where 
a  sentinel  or  somebody  on  the  watch  could  see 
the  door.  And  whatever  else  he  ate  or  drank, 
he  ate  or  drank  alone.  Sometimes,  when  the 
marines  or  sailors  had  any  special  jollification, 
they  were  permitted  to  invite  "  Plain-Buttons," 
as  they  called  him.  Then  Nolan  was  sent  with 
some  officer,  and  the  men  were  forbidden  to 
speak  of  home  while  he  was  there.  I  believe 
the  theory  was  that  the  sight  of  his  punishment 
did  them  good.  They  called  him  "  Plain-But 
tons,"  because,  while  he  always  chose  to  wear 
a  regulation  army-uniform,  he  was  not  permitted 
to  wear  the  army-button,  for  the  reason  that  it 
bore  either  the  initials  or  the  insignia  of  the 
country  he  had  disowned. 

I  remember,  soon  after  I  joined  the  navy,  I 
was  on  shore  with  some  of  the  older  officers 
from  our  ship  and  from  the  Brandywine,  which 
we  had  met  at  Alexandria.  We  had  leave  to 
make  a  party  and  go  up  to  Cairo  and  the  Pyra 
mids.  As  we  jogged  along  (you  went  on  don 
keys  then),  some  of  the  gentlemen  (we  boys 
called  them  "Dons,"  but  the  phrase  was  long 
since  changed)  fell  to  talking  about  Nolan,  and 
some  one  told  the  system  which  was  adopted 
from  the  first  about  his  books  and  other  reading. 
As  he  was  almost  never  permitted  to  go  on 
shore,  even  though  the  vessel  lay  in  port  for 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUXTRV.  13 

months,  his  time  at  the  best  hung  heavy  ;  and 
everybody  was  permitted  to  lend  him  books,  if 
they  were  not  published  in  America  and  made 
no  allusion  to  it.  These  were  common  enough 
in  the  old  days,  when  people  in  the  other  hemi 
sphere  talked  of  the  United  States  as  little  as 
we  do  of  Paraguay.  He  had  almost  all  the  for 
eign  papers  that  came  into  the  ship,  sooner  or 
later ;  only  somebody  must  go  over  them  first, 
and  cut  out  any  advertisement  or  stray  para 
graph  that  alluded  to  America.  This  was  a 
little  cruel  sometimes,  when  the  back  of  what 
was  cut  out  might  be  as  innocent  as  Hesiod. 
Right  in  the  midst  of  one  of  Napoleon's  battles, 
or  one  of  Canning's  speeches,  poor  Nolan  would 
find  a  great  hole,  because  on  the  back  of  the 
page  of  that  paper  there  had  been  an  advertise 
ment  of  a  packet  for  New  York,  or  a  scrap  from 
the  President's  message.  I  say  this  was  the 
first  time  I  ever  heard  of  this  plan,  which  after 
wards  I  had  enough  and  more  than  enough  to 
do  with.  I  remember  it,  because  poor  Phillips, 
who  was  of  the  party,  as  soon  as  the  allusion  to 
reading  was  made,  told  a  story  of  something 
which  happened  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  on 
Nolan's  first  voyage  ;  and  it  is  the  only  thing  I 
ever  knew  of  that  voyage.  They  had  touched 
at  the  Cape,  and  had  done  the  civil  thing  with 
the  English  Admiral  and  the  fleet,  and  then, 


14  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

leaving  for  a  long  cruise  up  the  Indian  Ocean, 
Phillips  had  borrowed  a  lot  of  English  books 
from  an  officer,  which,  in  those  days,  as  indeed 
in  these,  was  quite  a  windfall.  Among  them, 
as  the  Devil  would  order,  was  the  "  Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel,"  which  they  had  all  of  them 
heard  of,  but  which  most  of  them  had  never 
seen.  I  think  it  could  not  have  been  published 
long.  Well,  nobody  thought  there  could  be 
any  risk  of  anything  national  in  that,  though 
Phillips  swore  old  Shaw  had  cut  out  the  "Tem 
pest  "  from  Shakespeare  before  he  let  Nolan 
have  it,  because  he  said  "  the  Bermudas  ought 
to  be  ours,  and,  by  Jove,  should  be  one  day." 
So  Nolan  was  permitted  to  join  the  circle  one 
afternoon  when  a  lot  of  them  sat  on  deck  smok 
ing  and  reading  aloud.  People  do  not  do  such 
things  so  often  now;  but  when  I  was  young  we 
got  rid  of  a  great  deal  of  time  so.  Well,  so  it 
happened  that  in  his  turn  Nolan  took  the  book 
and  read  to  the  others  ;  and  he  read  very  well, 
as  I  know.  Nobody  in  the  circle  knew  a  line 
of  the  ,poem,  only  it  was  all  magic  and  Border 
chivalry,  and  was  ten  thousand  years  ago. 
Poor  Nolan  read  steadily  through  the  fifth 
canto,  stopped  a  minute  and  drank  something, 
and  then  began,  without  a  thought  of  what  was 
coming,  — 

"  Breathes  there  the  man,  with  soul  so  dead, 
Who  never  to  himself  hath  said."  — 


THE    .MAN     WiTHOlT    A    COUNTRY.  15 

It  seems  impossible  to  us  that  anybody  ever 
heard  this  for  the  first  time ;  but  all  these  fel 
lows  did  then,  and  poor  Nolan  himself  went  on, 
still  unconsciously  or  mechanically,  — 

"  This  is  my  own,  my  native  land  I1' 

Then  they  all  saw  something  was  to  pay  ;  but 
he  expected  to  get  through,  I  suppose,  turned  a 
little  pale,  but  plunged  on,  — 

"Whose  heart  hath  ne'er  within  him  burned, 
As  home  his  footsteps  he  hath  turned 

From  wandering  on  a  foreign  strand  ?  — 
If  such  there  breathe,  go,  mark  him  well,"- 

By  this  time  the  men  were  all  beside  them 
selves,  wishing  there  was  any  way  to  make  him 
turn  over  two  pages  ;  but  he  had  not  quite 
presence  of  mind  for  that;  he  gagged  a  little, 
colored  crimson,  and  staggered  on, — 

"  For  him  no  minstrel  raptures  swell ; 
High  though  his  titles,  proud  his  name, 
Boundless  his  wealth  as  wish  can  claim, 
Despite  these  titles,  power,  and  pelf, 
The  wretch,  concentred  all  in  self,"  - 

and  here  the  poor  fellow  choked,  could  not  go 
on,  but  started  up,  swung  the  book  into  the  sea, 
vanished  into  his  state-room,  "And  by  Jove," 
said  Phillips,  "  we  did  not  see  him  for  two  months 
again.  And  I  had  to  make  up  some  beggarly 


1 6  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

story  to  that  English  surgeon  why  I  did  not 
return  his  Waiter  Scott  to  him." 

That  story  shows  about  the  time  when  No 
lan's  braggadocio  must  have  broken  down.  At 
first,  they  said;.  he  took  a  very  high  tone,  con 
sidered  his  imprisonment  a  mere  farce,  affected 
to  enjoy  the  voyage,  and  all  that  ;  but  Phillips 
said  that  after  he  came  out  of  his  state-room  he 
never  was  the  same  man  again.  He  never  read 
aloud  again,  unless  it  was  the  Bible  or  Shake 
speare,  or  something  else  he  was  sure  of.  But  it 
was  not  that  merely.  He  never  entered  in  with 
the  other  young  men  exactly  as  a  companion 
again.  He  was  always  shy  afterwards,  when  I 
knew  him,  —  very  seldom  spoke,  unless  he  was 
spoken  to,  except  to  a  very  few  friends.  He 
lighted  up  occasionally,  —  I  remember  late  in 
his  life  hearing  him  fairly  eloquent  on  some 
thing  which  had  been  suggested  to  him  by  one 
of  Flechier's  sermons,  —  but  generally  he  had 
the  nervous,  tired  look  of  a  heart-wounded  man. 

When  Captain  Shaw  was  coming  home,  —  if 
as  I  say,  it  was  Shaw,  —  rather  to  the  surprise 
of  everybody,  they  made  one  of  the  Windward 
Islands,  and  lay  off  and  on  for  nearly  a  week. 
The  boys  said  the  officers  were  sick  of  salt- 
junk,  and  meant  to  have  turtle-soup  before  they 
came  home.  But  after  several  days  the  Warren 
came  to  the  same  rendezvous  ;  they  exchanged 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUN1KV.  I/ 

signals ;  she  sent  to  Phillips  and  these  home 
ward-bound  men  letters  and  papers,  and  told 
them  she  was  outward-bound,  perhaps  to  -the 
Mediterranean,  and  took  poor  Nolan  and  his 
traps  on  the  boat  back  to  try  his  second  cruise. 
He  looked  very  blank  when  he  was  told  to  get 
ready  to  join  her.  He  had  known  enough  of  the 
signs  of  the  sky  to  know  that  till  that  moment 
he  was  going  "home."  But  this  was  a  distinct 
evidence  of  something  he  had  not  thought  of, 
perhaps, — that  there  was  no  going  home  for 
him,  even  to  a  prison.  And  this  was  the  first 
of  some  twenty  such  transfers,  which  brought 
him  sooner  or  later  into  half  our  best  vessels, 
but  which  kept  him  all  his  life  at  least  some 
hundred  miles  from  the  country  he  had  hoped 
he  might  never  hear  of  again. 

It  may  have  been  on  that  second  cruise,  —  it 
was  once  when  he  was  up  the  Mediterranean,  — 
that  Mrs.  Graff,  the  celebrated  Southern  beauty 
of  those  days,  danced  with  him.  They  had  been 
lying  a  long  time  in  the  Bay  of  Naples,  and  the 
officers  were  very  intimate  in  the  English  fleet, 
and  there  had  been  great  festivities,  and  our  men 
thought  they  must  'give  a  great  ball  on  board 
the  ship.  How  they  ever  -did  it  on  board  the 
Warren  I  am  sure  I  do  not  know.  Perhaps  it 
was  not  the  Warren,  or  perhaps  ladies  did  not 
take  up  so  much  room  as  they  do  now.  They 


1 8  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

wanted  to  use  Nolan's  state-room  for  something, 
and  they  hated  to  do  it  without  asking  him  to 
the  ball ;  so  the  captain  said  they  might  ask 
him,  if  they  would  be  responsible  that  he  did 
not  talk  with  the  wrong  people,  "who  would 
give  him  intelligence."  So  the  dance  went  on, 
the  finest  party  that  had  ever  been  known,  I 
dare  say  ;  for  I  never  heard  of  a  man-of-war  ball 
that  was  not.  For  ladies  they  had  the  family  of 
the  American  consul,  one  or  two  travellers,  who 
had  adventured  so  far,  and  a  nice  bevy  of  Eng 
lish  girls  and  matrons,  perhaps  Lady  Hamilton 
herself. 

Well,  different  officers  relieved  each  other  in 
standing  and  talking  with  Nolan  in  a  friendly 
way,  so  as  to  be  sure  that  nobody  else  spoke  to 
him.  The  dancing  went  on  with  spirit,  and  after 
a  while  even  the  fellows  who  took  this  honorary 
guard  of  Nolan  ceased  to  fear  any  contretemps. 
Only  when  some  English  lady — Lady  Hamil 
ton,  as  I  said,  perhaps  —  called  for  a  set  of 
"American  dances,"  an  odd  thing  happened. 
Everybody  then  danced  contra-dances.  The 
black  band,  nothing  loath,  conferred  as  to  what 
"American  dances"  were,  and  started  off  with 
"Virginia  Reel,"  which  they  followed  with 
"  Money-Musk,"  which,  in  its  turn  in  those 
days,  should  have  been  followed  by  "The  Old 
Thirteen."  But  just  as  Dick,  the  leader,  tapped 


THE    .MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  IQ 

for  his  fiddles  to  begin,  and  bent  forward,  about 
to  say,  in  true  negro  state,  "'The  Old  Thir 
teen,'  gentlemen  and  ladies ! "  as  he  had  said 
"  '  Virginny  Reel,'  if  you  please  !  "  and  " 'Money- 
Musk,'  if  you  please  !  "  the  captain's  boy  tapped 
him  on  the  shoulder,  whispered  to  him,  and  he 
did  not  announce  the  name  of  the  dance  ;  he 
merely  bowed,  began  on  the  air,  and  they  all 
fell  to,  — the  officers  teaching  the  English  girls 
the  figure,  but  not  telling  them  why  it  had  no 
name. 

But  that  is  not  the  story  I   started  to  tell.  — 
As  the  dancing  went  on,  Nolan  and  our  fellows 
all  got  at  ease,  as  I  said,  —  so  much  so,  that  it 
seemed    quite    natural  for   him   to  bow  to   that 
splendid  Mrs.  Graff,  and  say,  — 

"  I  hope  you  have  not  forgotten  me,  Miss 
Rutledge.  Shall  I  have  the  honor  of  dancing  ?" 

He  did  it  so  quickly,  that  Fellows,  who  was 
by  him,  could  not  hinder  him.  She  laughed 
and  said,  — 

"  I  am  not  Miss  Rutledge  any  longer,  Mr. 
Nolan  ;  but  I  will  dance  all  the  same,"  just  nod 
ded  to  Fellows,  as  if  to  say  he  must  leave  Mr. 
Nolan  to  her,  and  led  him  off  to  the  place  where 
the  dance  was  forming. 

Nolan  thought  he  had  got  his  chance.  He 
had  known  her  at  Philadelphia,  and  at  other 
places  had  met  her,  and  this  was  a  Godsend. 


2O  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

You  could  not  talk  in  contra-dances,  as  you  do 
in  cotillions,  or  even  in  the  pauses  of  waltzing ; 
but  there  were  chances  for  tongues  and  sounds, 
as  well  as  for  eyes  and  blushes.  He  began  with 
her  travels,  and  Europe,  and  Vesuvius,  and  the 
French  ;  and  then,  when  they  had  worked  down, 
and  had  that  long  talking-time  at  the  bottom  of 
the  set,  he  said,  boldly, — a  little  pale,  she  said, 
as  she  told  me  the  story,  years  after,  — 

"And  what  do  you  hear  from  home,  Mrs. 
Graff?" 

And  that  splendid  creature  looked  through 
him.  Jove  !  how  she  must  have  looked  through 
him  ! 

"  Home  ! !  Mr.  Nolan  ! ! !  I  thought  you  were 
the  man  who  never  wanted  to  'hear  of  home 
again  !  "  —and  she  walked  directly  up  the  deck 
to  her  husband,  and  left  poor  Nolan  alone,  as  he 
always  was.  He  did  not  dance  again. 

I  cannot  give  any  history  of  him  in  order; 
nobody  can"  now ;  and,  indeed,  I  am  not  trying 
to.  These  are  the  traditions,  which  I  sort  out, 
as  I  believe  them,  from  the  myths  which  have 
been  told  about  this  man  for  forty  years.  The 
lies  that  have  been  told  about  him  are  legion. 
The  fellows  used  to  say  he  was  the  "  Iron 
Mask "  ;  and  poor  George  Pons  went  to  his 
grave  in  the  belief  that  this  was  the  author  of 
"Junius,"  who  was  being  punished  for  his  cele- 


Till:    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  21 

brated  libel  on  Thomas  Jefferson.  Pons  was 
not  very  strong  in  th/j  historical  line.  A  hap 
pier  story  than  either  of  these  I  have  told  is  of 
the  War.  That  came  along  soon  after.  I  have 
heard  this  affair  told  in  three,  or  four  ways,  — 
and,  indeed,  it  may  have  happened  more  than 
once.  But  which  ship  it  was  on  I  cannot  tell. 
However,  in  one,  at  least,  of  the  great  frigate- 
duels  with  the  English,  in  which  the  navy  was 
really  baptized,  it  happened  that  a  round-shot 
from  the  enemy  entered  one  of  our  ports  square, 
and  took  right  down  the  officer  of  the  gun  him 
self,  and  almost  every  man  "of  the  gun's  crew. 
Now  you  may  say  what  you  choose  about  cour 
age,  but  that  is  not  a  nice  thing  to  see.  But,  as 
the  men  who  were  not  killed  picked  themselves 
up,  and  as  they  and  the  surgeon's  people  were 
carrying  off  the  bodies,  there  appeared  Nolan,  in 
his  shirt-sleeves,  with  the  rammer  in  his  hand, 
and,  just  as  if  he  had  been  the  officer,  told  them 
off  with  authority,  —  who  should  go  to  the  cock 
pit  with  the  wounded  men,  who  should  stay  with 
him,  —  perfectly  cheery,  and  with  that  way  which 
makes  men  feel  sure  all  is  right  and  is  going  to 
be  right.  And  he  finished  loading  the  gun  with 
his  own  hands,  aimed  it,  and  bade  the  men  fire. 
And  there  he  stayed,  captain  of  that  gun,  keep 
ing  those  fellows  in  spirits,  till  the  enemy  struck, 
—  sitting  on  the  carriage  while  the  gun  was 


22  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

cooling,  though  he  was  exposed  all  the  time,  — 
showing  them  easier  ways  to  handle  heavy  shot, 
—  making  the  raw  hands  laugh  at  their  own 
blunders,  —  and  when  the  gun  cooled  again,  get 
ting  it  loaded  and  fired  twice  as  often  as  any 
other  gun  on  the  ship.  The  captain  walked  for 
ward  by  way  of  encouraging  the  men,  and  Nolan 
touched  his  hat  and  said,  — 

"I  am  showing  them  how  we  do  this  in  the 
artillery,  sir.'' 

And  this  is  the  part  of  the  story  where  all 
the  legends  agree  ;  and  the  Commodore  said,  — 

"  I  see  you  do,  and  I  thank  you,  sir ;  and  I 
shall  never  forget  this  day,  sir,  and  you  never 
shall,  sir." 

And  after  the  whole  thing  was  over,  and  he 
had  the  Englishman's  sword,  in  the  midst  of  the 
state  and  ceremony  of  the  quarter-deck,  he 
said,  — 

"Where  is  Mr.  Nolan?  Ask  Mr.  Nolan  to 
come  here." 

And  when  Nolan  came,  the  captain  said,  — 

"  Mr.  Nolan,  we  are  all  very  grateful  to  you 
to-day  ;  you  are  one  of  us  to-day  ;  you  will  be 
named  in  the  despatches." 

And  then  the  old  man  took  off  his  own  sword 
of  ceremony,  and  gave  it  to  Nolan,  and  made 
him  put  it  on.  The  man  told  me  this  who  saw 
it.  Nolan  cried  like  a  baby,  and  well  he  might. 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  23 

He  had  not  worn  a  sword  since  that  infernal 
day  at  Fort  Adams.  But  always  afterwards,  on 
occasions  of  ceremony,  he  wore  that  quaint  old 
French  sword  of  the  Commodore's. 

The  captain  did  mention  him  in  the  despatches. 
It  was  always  said  he  asked  that  he  might  be  par 
doned.  He  wrote  a  special  letter  to  the  Secre 
tary  of  War.  But  nothing  ever  came  of  it.  As 
I  said,  that  was  about  the  time  when  they  began 
to  ignore  the  whole  transaction  at  Washington, 
and  when  Nolan's  imprisonment  began  to  carry 
itself  on  because  there  was  nobody  to  stop  it 
without  any  new  orders  from  home. 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  he  was  with  Porter 
when  he  took  possession  of  tlie  Nukahiwa  Is 
lands.  Not  this  Porter,  you  know,  but  old  Por 
ter,  his  father,  Essex  Porter,  —  that  is,  the  old 
Essex  Porter,  not  this  Essex.  As  an  artillery 
officer,  who  had  seen  service  in  the  West,  Nolan 
knew  more  about  fortifications,  embrasures, 
ravelins,  stockades,  and  all  that,  than  any  of 
them  did  ;  and  he  worked  with  a  right  good-will 
in  fixing  that  battery  all  right.  I  have  always 
thought  it  was  a  pity  Porter  did  not  leave  him 
in  command  there  with  Gamble.  That  would 
have  settled  all  the  question  about  his  punish 
ment.  We  should  have  kept  the  islands,  and  at 
this  moment  we  should  have  one  station  in  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  Our  French  friends,  too,  when 


24  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

they  wanted  this  little  watering-place,  would 
have  found  it  was  preoccupied.  But  Madison 
and  the  Virginians,  of  course,  flung  all  that 
away. 

All  that  was  near  fifty  years  ago.  If  Nolan 
was  thirty  then,  he  must  have  been  near  eighty 
when  he  died.  He  looked  sixty  when  he  was 
forty.  But  he  never  seemed  to  me  to  change  a 
hair  afterwards.  As  I  imagine  his  life,  from 
what  I  have  seen  and  heard  of  it,  he  must  have 
been  in  every  sea,  and  yet  almost  never  on  land. 
He  must  have  known,  in  a  formal  way,  more 
officers  in  our  service  than  any  man  living 
knows.  He  told  me  once,  with  a  grave  smile, 
that  no  man  in  the  world  lived  so  methodical  a 
life  as  he.  "  You  know  the  boys  say  I  am  the 
Iron  Mask,  and  you  know  how  busy  he  was." 
He  said  it  did  not  do  for  any  one  to  try  to  read 
all  the  time,  more  than  to  do  anything  else  all 
the  time ;  but  that  he  read  just  five  hours  a  day. 
"Then,"  he  said,  "I  keep  up  my  note-books, 
writing  in  them  at  such  and  such  hours  from 
what  I  have  been  reading;  and  I  include  in 
these  my  scrap-books."  These  were  very  curi 
ous  indeed.  He  had  six  or  eight,  of  different 
subjects.  There  was  one  of  History,  one  of 
Natural  Science,  one  which  he  called  "  Odds 
and  Ends."  But  they  were  not  merely  books 
of  extracts  from  newspapers.  They  had  bits 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  25 

of  plants  and  ribbons,  shells  tied  on,  and 
carved  scraps  of  bone  and  wood,  which  he  had 
taught  the  men  to  cut  for  him,  and  they  were 
beautifully  illustrated.  He  drew  admirably. 
He  had  some  of  the  funniest  drawings  there, 
and  some  of  the  most  pathetic,  that  I  have  ever 
seen  in  my  life.  I  wonder  who  will  have  Nolan's 
scrap-books. 

Well,  he  said  his  reading  and  his  notes  were 
his  profession,  and  that  they  took  five  hours 
and  two  hours  respectively  of  each  day. 
"Then,"  said  he,  "every  man  should  have  a 
diversion  as  well  as  a  profession.  My  Natural 
History  is  my  diversion.1'  That  took  two  hours 
a  day  more.  The  men  used  to  bring  him  birds 
and  fish,  but  on  a  long  cruise  he  had  to  satisfy 
himself  with  centipedes  and  cockroaches  and 
such  small  game.  He  was  the  only  naturalist 
I  ever  met  who  knew  anything  about  the  habits 
of  the  house-fly  and  the  mosquito.  All  those 
people  can  tell  you  whether  they  are  Lepidop- 
tera  or  Steptopotem  ;  but  as  for  telling  how  you 
can  get  rid  of  them,  or  how  they  get  away  from 
you  when  you  strike  them, — why  Linnaeus 
knew  as  little  of  that  as  John  Fox  the  idiot 
did.  These  nine  hours  made  Nolan's  regular 
daily  "occupation."  The  rest  of  the  time  he 
talked  or  walked.  Till  he  grew  very  old,  he 
went  aloft  a  great  deal.  He  always  kept  up  his 


26  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

exercise ;  and  I  never  heard  that  he  was  ill.  If 
any  other  man  was  ill,  he  was  the  kindest  nurse 
in  the  world  ;  and  he  knew  more  than  half  the 
surgeons  do.  Then  if  anybody  was  sick  or 
died,  or  if  the  captain  wanted  him  to,  on  any 
other  occasion,  he  was  always  ready  to  read 
prayers.  I  have  said  that  he  read  beautifully. 
My  own  acquaintance  with  Philip  Nolan 
began  six  or  eight  years  after  the  War,  on  my 
first  voyage  after  I  was  appointed  a  midship 
man.  It  was  in  the  first  days  after  our  Slave- 
Trade  treaty,  while  the  Reigning  House,  which 
was  still  the  House  of  Virginia,  had  still  a  sort 
of  sentimentalism  about  the  suppression  of  the 
horrors  of  the  Middle  Passage,  and  something 
was  sometimes  done  that  way.  We  were  in 
the  South  Atlantic  on  that  business.  From 
the  time  I  joined,  I  believe  I  thought  Nolan 
was  a  sort  of  lay  chaplain,  —  a  chaplain  with  a 
blue  coat.  I  never  asked  about  him.  Every 
thing  in  the  ship  was  strange  to  me.  I  knew  it 
was  green  to  ask  questions,  and  I  suppose  I 
thought  there  "was  a  "  Plain-  Buttons  "  on  every 
ship.  We  had  him  to  dine  in  our  mess  once  a 
week,  and  the  caution  was  given  that  on  that 
day  nothing  was  to  be  said  about  home.  But  if 
they  had  told  us  not  to  say  anything  about  the 
planet  Mars  or  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  I 
should  not  have  asked  why ;  there  were  a  great 


THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  2/ 

many  things  which  seemed  to  me  to  have  as 
little  reason.  I  first  came  to  understand  any 
thing  about  "the  man  without  a  country  "  one 
day  when  we  overhauled  a  dirty  little  schooner 
which  had  slaves  on  board.  An  officer  was 
sent  to  take  charge  of  her,  and,  after  a  few 
minutes,  he  sent  back  his  boat  to  ask  that  some 
one  might  be  sent  him  who  could  speak  Portu 
guese.  We  were  all  looking  over  the  rail  when 
the  message  came,  and  we  all  wished  we  could 
interpret,  when  the  captain  asked  who  spoke 
Portuguese.  But  none  of  the  officers  did  ;  and 
just  as  the  captain  was  sending  forward  to  ask 
if  any  of  the  people  could,  Nolan  stepped  out 
and  said  he  should  be  glad  to  interpret,  if  the 
captain  wished,  as  he  understood  the  language. 
The  captain  thanked  him,  fitted  out  another 
boat  with  him,  and  in  this  boat  it  was  my  luck 
to  go. 

When  we  got  there,  it  was  such  a  scene  as 
you  seldom  see,  and  never  want  to.  Nastiness 
beyond  account,  and  chaos  run  loose  in  the 
midst  of  the  nastiness.  There  were  not  a  great 
many  of  the  negroes  ;  but  by  way  of  making 
what  there  were  understand  that  they  were 
free,  Vaughan  had  had  their  hand-cuffs  and 
ankle-cuffs  knocked  off,  and,  for  convenience' 
sake,  was  putting  them  upon  the  rascals  of  the 
schooner's  crew.  The  negroes  were,  most  of 


28  THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

them,  out  of  the  held,  and  swarming  all  round 
the  dirty  deck,  with  a  central  throng  surround 
ing  Vaughan  and  addressing  him  in  every  dia 
lect,  and.  patois  of  a  dialect,  from  the  Zulu  click 
up  to  the  Parisian  of  Beledelj  creed. 

As  we  came  on  deck,  Vaughan  looked  down 
from  a  hogshead,  on  which  he  had  mounted  m 
desperation,  and  said  :  - 

"  For  God's  love,  is  there  anybody  who  can 
make  these  wretches  understand  something  ? 
The  men  gave  them  rum,  and  that  did  not  quiet 
them.  I  knocked  that  big  fellow  down  twice, 
and  that  did  not  soothe  him.  And  then  I  talked 
Choctaw  to  all  of  them  together ;  and  I'll  be 
hanged  if  they  understood  that  as  well  as  they 
understood  the  English." 

Nolan  said  he  could  speak  Portuguese,  and 
one  or  two  fine-looking  Kroomen  were  dragged 
out,  who,  as  it  had  been  found  already,  had 
worked  for  the  Portuguese  on  the  coast  at  Fer 
nando  Po. 

"Tell  them  they  are  free,"  said  Vaughan; 
"and  tell  them  that  these  rascals  are  to  be 
hanged  as  soon  as  we  can  get  rope  enough." 

Nolan  "put  that  into  Spanish,"  —that  is,  he 
explained  it  in  such  Portuguese  as  the  Kroomen 
could  understand,  and  they  in  turn  to  such  of 
the  negroes  as  could  understand  them.  Then 
there  was  such  a  yell  of  delight,  clinching  of 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  2Q 

fists,  leaping  and  dancing,  kissing  of  Nolan's 
feet,  and  a  general  rush  made  to  the  hogshead 
by  way  of  spontaneous  worship  of  Vaughan,  as 
the  dens  ex  macJdna  of  the  occasion. 

"Tell  them,"  said  Vaughan,  well  pleased, 
"that  I  will  take  them  all  to  Cape  Palmas." 

This  did  not  answer  so  well.  Cape  Palmas 
was  practically  as  far  from  the  homes  of  most 
of  them  as  New  Orleans  or  Rio  Janeiro  was  ; 
that  is,  they  would  be  eternally  separated  from 
home  there.  And  their  interpreters,  as  we 
could  understand,  instantly  said,  "  Ah,  non 
Palmas,"  and  began  to  propose  infinite  other 
expedients  in  most  voluble  language.  Vaughan 
was  rather  disappointed  at  this  result  of  his  lib 
erality,  and  asked  Nolan  eagerly  what  they  said. 
The  drops  stood  on  poor  Nolan's  white  forehead, 
as  he  hushed  the  men  down,  and  said  :  — 

"He  says,  'Not  Palmas.'  He  says,  'Take  us 
home,  take  us  to  our  own  country,  take  us  to  our 
own  house,  take  us  to  our  own  pickaninnies  and 
our  own  women.'  He  says  he  has  an  old  father 
and  mother  who  will  die  if  they  do  not  see  him. 
And  this  one  says  he  left  his  people  all  sick,  and 
paddled  down  to  Fernando  to  beg  the  white 
doctor  to  come  and  help  them,  and  that  these 
devils  caught  him  in  the  bay  just  in  sight  of 
home,  and  that  he  had  never  seen  anybody  from 
home  since  then.  And  this  one  says,"  choked 


3<3  THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

out  Nolan,  "  that  he  has  not  heard  a  word  from 
his  home  in  six  months,  while  he  has  been 
locked  up  in  an  infernal  barracoon." 

Vaughan  always  said  he  grew  gray  himself 
while  Nolan  struggled  through  this  interpre 
tation.  I,  who  did  not  understand  anything  of 
the  passion  involved  in  it,  saw  that  the  very 
elements  were  melting  with  fervent  heat,  and 
that  something  was  to  pay  somewhere.  Even 
the  negroes  themselves  stopped  howling,  as  they 
saw  Nolan's  agony,  and  Vaughan' s  almost  equal 
agony  of  sympathy.  As  quick  as  he  could  get 
words,  he  said  :  — 

"  Tell  them  yes,  yes,  yes  ;  tell  them  they  shall 
go  to  the  Mountains  of  the  Moon  if  they  will. 
If  I  sail  the  schooner  through  the  Great  White 
Desert  they  shall  go  home  !  " 

And  after  some  fashion  Nolan  said  so.  And 
then  they  all  fell  to  kissing  him  again,  and 
wanted  to  rub  his  nose  with  theirs. 

But  he  could  not  stand  it  long ;  and  getting 
Vaughan  to  say  he  might  go  back,  he  beckoned 
me  down  into  our  boat.  As  we  lay  back  in  the 
stern-sheets  and  the  men  gave  way,  he  said  to 
me  :  "  Youngster,  let  that  show  you  what  it  is 
to  be  without  a  family,  without  a  home,  and 
without  a  country.  And  if  you  are  ever  tempted 
to  say  a  word  or  to  do  a  thing  that  shall  put  a 
bar  between  you  and  your  family,  your  home, 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  3! 

and  your  country,  pray  God  in  his  mercy  to 
take  you  that  instant  home  to  his  own  heaven. 
Stick  by  your  family,  boy  ;  forget  you  have  a 
self,  while  you  do  everything  for  them.  Think 
of  your  home,  boy  ;  write  and  send,  and  talk 
about  it.  Let  it  be  nearer  and  nearer  to  your 
thought,  the  farther  you  have  to  travel  from  it  ; 
and  rush  back  to  it,  when  you  are  free,  as  that 
poor  black  slave  is  doing  now.  And  for  your 
country,  boy,"  and  the  words  rattled  in  his 
throat,  "  and  for  that  flag,"  and  he  pointed  to 
the  ship,  "never  dream  a  dream  but  of  serving 
her  as  she  bids  you,  though  the  service  carry 
you  through  a  thousand  hells.  No  matter  what 
happens  to  you,  no  matter  who  flatters  you  or 
who  abuses  you,  never  look  at  another  flag, 
never  let  a  night  pass  but  you  pray  God  to  bless 
that  flag.  Remember,  boy,  that  behind  all  these 
men  you  have  to  do  with,  behind  officers,  and 
government,  and  people  even,  there  is  the 
Country  Herself,  your  Country,  and  that  you 
belong  to  Her  as  you  belong  to  your  own 
mother.  Stand  by  Her,  boy,  as  you  would 
stand  by  your  mother,  if  those  devils  there  had 
got  hold  of  her  to-day  !  " 

I  was  frightened  to  death  by  his  calm,  hard 
passion  ;  but  I  blundered  out,  that  I  would,  by 
all  that  was  holy,  and  that  I  had  never  thought 
of  doing  anything  else.  He  hardly  seemed  to 


32  THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

hear  me  ;  but  he  did,  almost  in  a  whisper,  say  : 
"  O,  if  anybody  had  said  so  to  me  when  I  was 
of  your  age  !  " 

I  think  it  was  this  half-confidence  of  his, 
which  I  never  abused,  for  I  never  told  this 
story  till  now,  which  afterward  made  us  great 
friends.  He  was  very  kind  to  me.  Often  he 
sat  up,  or  even  got  up,  at  night,  to  walk  the 
deck  with  me,  when  it  was  my  watch.  He  ex 
plained  to  me  a  great  deal  of  my  mathematics, 
and  I  owe  to  him  my  taste  for  mathematics. 
He  lent  fne  books,  and  helped  me  about  my 
reading.  He  never  alluded  so  directly  to  his 
story  again  ;  but  from  one  and  another  ofiicer 
I  have  learned,  in  thirty  years,  what  I  am  tell 
ing.  When  we  parted  from  him  in  St.  Thomas 
harbor,  at  the  end  of  our  cruise,  I  was  more 
sorry  than  I  can  tell.  I  was  very  glad  to  meet 
him  again  in  1830;  and  later  in  life,  when  I 
thought  I  had  some  influence  in  Washington,  I 
moved  heaven  and  earth  to  have  him  discharged. 
But  it  was  like  getting  a  ghost  out  of  prison. 
They  pretended  there  was  no  such  man,  and 
never  was  such  a  man.  They  will  say  so  at 
the  Department  now!  Perhaps  they  do  not 
know.  It  will  not  be  the  first  thing  in  the  ser 
vice  of  which  the  Department  appears  to  know 
nothing ! 

There  is  a  story  that    Nolan  met  Burr  once 


THK    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  33 

on  one  of  our  vessels,  when  a  party  of  Amer 
icans  came  on  board  in  the  Mediterranean. 
But  this  I  believe  to  be  a  lie;  or,  rather  it  is  .a 
myth,  ben  trovuto,  involving  a  tremendous  blow 
ing-up  with  which  he  sunk  Burr,  —  asking  him 
how  he  liked  to  be  "without  a  country."  But 
it  is  clear  from  Burr's  life  that  nothing  of  the 
sort  could  have  happened  ;  and  I  mention  this 
only  as  an  illustration  of  the  stories  which  get 
a-going  where  there  is  the  least  mystery  at 
bottom. 

So  poor  Philip  Nolan  had  his  wish  fulfilled. 
I  know  bvi4"  one  fate  more  dreadful ;  it  is  the 
fate  reserved  for  those  men  who  shall  have  one 
day  to  exile  themselves  from  their  country  be 
cause  they  have  attempted  her  ruin,  and  shall 
have  at  the  same  time  to  see  the  prosperity  and 
honor  to  which  she  rises  when  she  has  rid  her 
self  of  them  and  their  iniquities.  The  wish  of 
poor  Nolan,  as  we  all  learned  to  call  him,  not 
because  his  punishment  was  too  great,  but  be 
cause  his  repentance  was  so  clear,  was  precisely 
the  wish  of  every  Bragg  and  Beauregard  who 
broke  a  soldier's  oath  two  years  ago,  and  of 
every  Maury  and  Barren  who  broke  a  sailor's. 
I  do  not  know  how  often  they  have  repented. 
1  do  know  that  they  have  done  all  that  in  them 
lay  that  they  might  have  no  country,  —  that  all 
the  honors,  associations,  memories,  and  hopes 


34  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

which  belong  to  "  country  "  might  be  broken  up 
into  little  shreds  and  distributed  to  the  winds. 
I  know,  too,  that  their  punishment,  as  they 
vegetate  through  what  is  left  of  life  to  them 
in  wretched  Boulognes  and  Leicester  Squares, 
where  they  are  destined  to  upbraid  each  other 
till  they  die,  will  have  all  the  agony  of  Nolan's, 
with  the  added  pang  that  every  one  who  sees 
them  will  see  them  to  despise  and  to  execrate 
them.  They  will  have  their  wish,  like  him. 

For  him,  poor  fellow,  he  repented  of  his  folly, 
and  then,  like  a  man,  submitted  to  the  fate  he 
had  asked  for.  He  never  intentionally  added 
to  the  difficulty  or  delicacy  of  the  charge  of 
those  who  had  him  in  hold.  Accidents  would 
happen ;  but  they  never  happened  from  his 
fault.  Lieutenant  Truxton  told  me,  that,  when 
Texas  was  annexed,  there  was  a  careful  discus 
sion  among  the  officers,  whether  they  should 
get  hold  of  Nolan's  handsome  set  of  maps,  and 
cut  Texas  out  of  it,  — from  the  map  of  the 
world  and  the  map  of  Mexico.  The  United 
States  had  been  cut  out  when  the  atlas  was 
bought  for  him.  But  it  was  voted,  rightly 
enough,  that  to  do  this  would  be  virtually  to 
reveal  to  him  what  had  happened,  or,  as  Harry 
Cole  said,  to  make  him  think  Old  Burr  had  suc 
ceeded.  So  it  was  from  no  fault  of  Nolan's 
that  a  great  botch  happened  at  my  own  table. 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  35 

when,  for  a  short  time,  I  was  in  command  of 
the  George  Washington  corvette,  on  the  South 
American  station.  We  were  lying  in  the  La 
.Plata,  and  some  of  the  officers,  who  had  been 
on  shore,  and  had  just  joined  again,  were  enter 
taining  us  with  accounts  of  their  misadventures 
in  riding  the  half-wild  horses  of  Buenos  Ayres. 
Nolan  was  at  table,  and  was  in  an  unusually 
bright  and  talkative  mood.  Some  story  of  a 
tumble  reminded  him  of  an  adventure  of  his 
own,  when  he  was  catching  wild  horses  in  Texas 
with  his  adventurous  cousin  at  a  time  when  he 
must  have  been  quite  a  boy.  He  told  the  story 
with  a  good  deal  of  spirit,  —  so  much  so,  that 
the  silence  which  often  follows  a  good  story 
hung  over  the  table  for  an  instant,  to  be  broken 
by  Nolan  himself.  For  he  asked  perfectly  un 
consciously  : 

"  Pray,  what  has  become  of  Texas  ?  After 
the  Mexicans  got  their  independence,  I  thought 
that  province  of  Texas  would  come  forward  very 
fast.  It  is  really  one  of  the  finest  regions  on 
earth  ;  it  is  the  Italy  of  this  continent.  But  I 
have  not  seen  or  heard  a  word  of  Texas  for  near 
twenty  years." 

There  were  two  Texan  officers  at  the  table. 
The  reason  he  had  never  heard  of  Texas  was 
that  Texas  and  her  affairs  had  been  painfully 
cut  out  of  his  newspapers  since  Austin  began 


36  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

his  settlements ;  so  that,  while  he  read  of  Hon 
duras  and  Tamaulipas,  and,  till  quite  lately,  of 
California,  —  this  virgin  province,  in  which  his 
brother  had  travelled  so  far,  and,  I  believe,  had 
died,  had  ceased  to  be  to  him.  Waters  and 
Williams,  the  two  Texas  men,  looked  grimly  at 
each  other,  and  tried  not  to  laugh.  Edward 
Morris  'had  his  attention  attracted  by  the  third 
link  in  the  chain  of  the  captain's  chandelier. 
Watrous  was  seized  with  a  convulsion  of  sneez 
ing.  Nolan  himself  saw  that  something  was  to 
pay,  he  did  not  know  what.  And  I,  as  master 
of  the  feast,  had  to  say,  — 

"  Texas  is  out  of  the  map,  Mr.  Nolan.  Have 
you  seen  Captain  Back's  curious  account  of  Sir 
Thomas  Roe's  Welcome  ? " 

After  that  cruise  I  never  saw  Nolan  again.  I 
wrote  to  him  at  least  twice  a  year,  for  in  that 
voyage  we  became  even  confidentially  intimate  ; 
but  he  never  wrote  to  me.  The  other  men 
tell  me  that  in  those  fifteen  years  he  aged 
very  fast,  as  well  he  might  indeed,  but  that  he 
was  still  the  same  gentle,  uncomplaining,  silent 
sufferer  that  he  ever  was,  bearing  as  best  he 
could  his  self-appointed  punishment,  —  rather 
less  social,  perhaps,  with  new  men  whom  he  did 
not  know,  but  more  anxious,  apparently,  than 
ever  to  serve  and  befriend  and  teach  the  boys, 
some  of  whovn  fairly  seemed  to  worship  him- 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  37 

And  now  it  seems  the  dear  old  fellow  is  dead. 
He  has  found  a  home  at  last,  and  a  country. 

Since  writing  this,  and  while  considering 
whether  or  no  I  would  print  it,  as  a  warning  to 
the  young  Nolans  and  Vallandighams  and  Tat- 
nalls  .of  to-day  of  what  it  is  to  throw  away  a 
country,  I  have  received  from  Danforth-,  who  is 
on  board  the  Levant,  a  letter  which  gives  an 
account  of  Nolan's  last  hours.  It  removes  all 
my  doubts  about  telling  this  story. 

To  understand  the  first  words  of  the  letter, 
the  non-professional  reader  should  remember 
that  after  1817,  the  position  of  every  officer  who 
had  Nolan  in  charge  was  one  of  the  greatest 
delicacy.  The  government  had  failed  to  renew 
the  order  of  1807  regarding  him.  What  was  a 
man  to  do  ?  Should  he  let  him  go  ?  What, 
then,  if  he  were  called  to  account  by  the  De 
partment  for  violating  the  order  of  1807? 
Should  he  keep  him  ?  What,  then,  if  Nolan 
should  be  liberated  some  day,  and  should  bring 
an  action  for  false  imprisonment  or  kidnapping 
against  every  man  who  had  had  him  in  charge  ? 
I  urged  and  pressed  this  upon  Southard,  and  I 
have  reason  to  think  that  other  officers  did  the 
same  thing.  But  the  .Secretary  always  said,  as 
they  so  often  do  at  Washington,  that  there  were 
no  special  orders  to  give,  and  that  we  must  act 


38  THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

on  our  own  judgment.  That  means,  "  If  you 
succeed,  you  will  be  sustained  ;  if  you  fail,  you 
will  be  disavowed."  Well,  as  Danforth  says, 
all  that  is  over  now,  though  I  do  not  know  but 
I  expose  myself  to  a  criminal  prosecution  on 
the  evidence  of  the  very  revelation  I  am 
making. 

Here  is  the  letter  :  — 

"  LEVANT,  2°  2'  S.  (a   131°  W. 

"DEAR  FRED  : — I  try  to  find  heart  and  life 
to  tell  you  that  it  is  all  over  with  dear  old  Nolan. 
I  have  been  with  him  on  this  voyage  more  than 
I  ever  was,  and  I  can  understand  wholly  now 
the  way  in  which  you  used  to  speak  of  the  dear 
old  fellow.  I  could  see  that  he  was  not  strong, 
but  I  had  no  idea  the  end  was  so  near.  Tne 
doctor  has  been  watching  him  very  carefully, 
and  yesterday  morning  came  to  me  and  told  me 
that  Nolan  was  not  so  well,  and  had  not  left  his 
state-room,  — -  a  thing  I  never  remember  before. 
He  had  let  the  doctor  come  and  see  him  as  he 
lay  there,  —  the  first  time  the  doctor  had  been 
in  the  state-room,  —  and  he  said  he  should  like 
to  see  me.  O  dear !  do  you  remember  the 
mysteries  we  boys  used  to  invent  about  his 
room,  in  the  old  Intrepid  -days  ?  Well,  I  went 
in,  and  there,  to  be  sure,  the  poor  fellow  lay  in 
his  berth,  smiling  pleasantly  as  he  gave  me  his 


THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  39 

hand,  but  looking  very  frail.  I  could  not  help 
a  glance  round,  which  showed  me  what  a  little 
shrine  he  had  made  of  the  box  he  was  lying  in. 
The  stars  and  stripes  were  triced  up  above  and 
around  a  picture  of  Washington,  and  he  had 
painted  a  majestic  eagle,  with  lightnings  blazing 
from  his  beak  and  his  foot  just  clasping  the 
whole  globe,  which  his  wings  overshadowed. 
The  dear  old  boy  saw  my  glance,  and  said,  with 
a  sad  smile,  '  Here,  you  see,  I  have  a  country  ! ' 
And  then  he  pointed  to  the  foot  of  his  bed, 
where  I  had  n(3t  seen  before  a  great  map  of  the 
United  States,  as  he  had  drawn  it  from  memory, 
and  which  he  had  there  to  look  upon  as  he  lay. 
Quaint,  queer  old  names  were  on  it,  in  large 
letters  :  '  Indiana  Territory,'  '  Mississippi  Ter 
ritory,'  and  '  Louisiana  Territory,',  as  I  suppose 
our  fathers  learned  such  things  ;  but  the  old 
fellow  had  patched  in  Texas,  too  ;  he  had  carried 
his  western  boundary  all  the  way  to  the  Pacific, 
but  on  that  shore  he  had  defined  nothing. 

"  '  O  Danforth,'  he  said,  '  I  know  I  am  dying. 
I  cannot  get  home.  Surely  you  will  tell  me 
something  now  ?  —  Stop  !  stop  !  Do  not  speak 
till  I  say  what  I  am  sure  you  know,  that  there 
is  not  in  this  ship,  that  there  is  not  in  America, 
—  God  bless  her  !  —  a  more  loyal  man  than  I. 
There  cannot  be  a  man  who  loves  the  old  flag  as 
I  do,  or  prays  for  it  as  I  do,  or  hopes  for  it  as  I 


4O  THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

do.  There  are  thirty-four  stars  in  it  now,  Dan- 
forth.  I  thank  God  for  that,  though  I  do  not 
know  what  their  names  are.  There  has  never 
been  one  taken  away  :  I  thank  God  for  that.  I 
know  by  that  that  there  has  never  been  any  suc 
cessful  Burr.  O  Danforth,  Danforth,'  he  sighed 
out,  'how  like  a  wretched  night's  dream  a  boy's 
idea  of  personal  fame  or  of  separate  sovereignty 
seems,  when  one  looks  back  on  it  after  such  a 
life  as  mine  !  But  tell  me, —  tell  me  something, 
—  tell  me  everything,  Danforth,  before  I  die  ! ' 

"  Ingham,  I  swear  to  you  that  I  felt  like  a 
monster  that  I  had  not  told  him  everything 
before.  Danger  or  no  danger,  delicacy  or  no 
delicacy,  who  was  I,  that  I  should  have  been 
acting  the  tyrant  all  this  time  over  this  dear, 
sainted  old  man,  who  had  years  ago  expiated,  in 
his  whole  manhood's  life,  the  madness  of  a  boy's 
treason  ?  '  Mr.  Nolan,'  said  I,  '  I  will  tell  you 
everything  you  ask  about.  Only,  where  shall  I 
begin  ? ' 

"  O  the  blessed  smile  that  crept  over  his  white 
face !  and  he  pressed  my  hand  and  said,  '  God 
bless  you  !'  'Tell  me  their  names,'  he  said,  and 
he  pointed  to  the  stars  on  the  flag.  '  The  last 
I  know  is  Ohio.  My  father  lived  in  Kentucky. 
But  I  have  guessed  Michigan  and  Indiana  and 
Mississippi,  —  that  was  where  Fort  Adams  is, — 
they  make  twenty.  But  where  are  your  other 


THE    MAX    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  4! 

fourteen  ?     You  have  not  cut  up  any  of  the  old 
ones,  I  hope  ? ' 

"Well,  that  was  not  a  bad  text,  and  I  told 
him  the  names  in  as  good  order  as  I  could,  and 
he  bade  me  take  down  his  beautiful  map  and 
draw  them  in  as  I  best  could  with  my  pencil. 
He  was  wild  with  delight  about  Texas,  told  me 
how  his  cousin  died  there ;  he  had  marked  a 
gold  cross  near  where  he  supposed  his  grave 
was  ;  and  he  had  guessed  at  Texas.  Then  he 
was  delighted  as  he  saw  California  and  Oregon  ; 
—  that,  he  said,  he  had  suspected  partly,  because 
he  had  never  been  permitted  to  land  on  that 
shore,  though  the  ships  were  there  so  much. 
'And  the  men/  said  he,  laughing,  'brought  off  a 
good  deal  besides  furs.'  Then  he  went  back  — 
heavens,  how  far!  —  to  ask  about  the  Chesa 
peake,  and  what  was  done  to  Barren  for 
surrendering  her  to  the  Leopard,  and  whether 
Burr  ever  tried  again,  —  and  he  ground  his  teeth 
with  the  only  passion  he  showed.  But  in  a 
moment  that  was  over,  and  he  said,  '  God  for 
give  me,  for  I  am  sure  I  forgive  him.'  Then  he 
asked  about  the  old  war,— -told  me  the  true 
story  of  his  serving  the  gun  the  day  we  took 
the  Java,- — asked  about  dear  old  David  Porter, 
as  he  called  him.  Then  he  settled  down  more 
quietly,  and  very  happily,  to  hear  me  tell  in 
an  hour  the  history  of  fifty  years. 


42  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

"  How  I  wished  it  had  been  somebody  who 
knew  something !  But  I  did  as  well  as  I  could. 
I  told  him  of  the  English  war.  I  told  him  about 
Fulton  and  the  steamboat  beginning.  I  told 
him  about  old  Scott,  and  Jackson  ;  told  him  all 
I  could  think  of  about  the  Mississippi,  and  New 
Orleans,  and  Texas,  and  his  own  old  Kentucky. 
And  do  you  think,  he  asked  who  was  in  com 
mand  of  the  '  Legion  of  the  West.'  I  told  him 
it  was  a  very  gallant  officer  named  Grant,  and 
that,  by  our  last  news,  he  was  about  to  establish 
his  head-quarters  at  Vicksburg.  Then,  '  Where 
was  Vicksburg  ? '  I  worked  that  out  on  the 
map ;  it  was  about  a  hundred  miles,  more  or 
less,  above  his  old  Fort  Adams  ;  and  I  thought 
Fort  Adams  must  be  a  ruin  now.  '  It  must  be 
at  old  Vick's  plantation,  at  Walnut  Hills,'  said 
he  :  '  well,  that  is  a  change  ! ' 

"I  tell  you,  Ingham,  it  was  a  hard  thing  to 
condense  the  history  of  half  a  century  into  that 
talk  with  a  sick  man.  And  I  do  not  now  know 
what  I  told  him,  — of  emigration,  and  the  means 
of  it,  —  of  steamboats,  and  railroads,  and  tele 
graphs,  —  of  inventions,  and  books,  and  litera 
ture, —  of  the  colleges,  and  West  Point,  and  the 
Naval  School,  —  but  with  the  queerest  interrup 
tions  that  ever  you  heard.  You  see  it  was  Rob 
inson  Crusoe  asking  all  the  accumulated  ques 
tions  of  fifty-six  years ! 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  43 

•  "  I  remember  he  asked,  all  of  a  sudden,  who 
was  President  now  ;  and  when  I  told  him,  he 
asked  if  Old  Abe  was  General  Benjamin  Lin 
coln's  son.  He  said  he  met  old  General  Lincoln, 
when  he  was  quite  a  boy  himself,  at  some  Indian 
treaty.  I  said  no,  that  Old  Abe  was  a  Ken- 
tuckian  like  himself,  but  I  could  not  tell  him  of 
what  family ;  he  had  worked  up  from  the  ranks. 
'  Good  for  him  ! '  cried  Nolan ;  '  I  am  glad  of 
that.  As  I  have  brooded  and  wondered,  I  have 
thought  our  danger  was  in  keeping  up  those 
regular  successions  in  the  first  families.'  Then 
I  got  talking  about  my  visit  to  Washington.  I 
told  him  of  meeting  the  Oregon  Congressman, 
Harding  ;  I  told  him  about  the  Smithsonian,  and 
the  Exploring  Expedition  ;  I  told  him  about  the 
Capitol,  and  the  statues  for  the  pediment,  and 
Crawford's  Liberty,  and  Greenough's  Washing 
ton  :  Ingham,  I  told  him  everything  I  could 
think  of  that  would  show  the  grandeur  of  his 
country  and  its  prosperity ;  but  I  could  not 
make  up  my  mouth  to  tell  him  a  word  about 
this  infernal  Rebellion  ! 

"And  he  drank  it  in,  and  enjoyed  it  as  I  can 
not  tell  you.  He  grew  more  and  more  silent, 
yet  I  never  thought  he  was  tired  or  faint.  I 
gave  him  a  glass  of  water,  but  he  just  wet  his 
lips,  and  told  me  not  to  go  away.  Then  he 
asked  me  to  bring  the  Presbyterian  'Book  of 


44  THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY. 

Public  Prayer/  which  lay  there,  and  said,  with  a 
smile,  that  it  would  open  at  the  right  place,  — 
and  so  it  did.  There  was  his  double  red  mark 
down  the  page  ;  and  I  knelt  down  and  read,  and 
he  repeated  with  me,  '  For  ourselves  and  our 
country,  O  gracious  God,  we  thank  Thee,  that, 
notwithstanding  our  manifold  transgressions  for 
Thy  holy  laws,  Thou  hast  continued  to  us  Thy' 
marvellous  kindness,' — and. so  to  the  end  of 
that  thanksgiving.  Then  he  turned  to  the  end 
of  the  same  book,  and  I  read  the  words  more 
familiar  to  me  :  '  Most  heartily  we  beseech  Thee 
with  Thy  favor  to  behold  and  bless  Thy  servant, 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  and  all  oth 
ers  in  authority,'  —  and  the  rest  of  the  Episco 
pal  collect.  '  Danforth,'  said  he,  'I  have  repeated 
those  prayers  night  and  morning,  it  is  now  fifty- 
five  years.'  And  then  he  said  he  would  go  to 
sleep.  He  bent  me  down  over  him  and  kissed 
me  ;  and  he  said,  '  Look  in  my  Bible,  Danforth, 
when  I  am  gone.'  And  I  went  away. 

"  But  I  had  no  thought  it  was  the  end.  I 
thought  he  was  tired  and  would  sleep.  I  knew 
he  was  happy  and  I  wanted  him  to  be  alone. 

"  But  in  an  hour,  when  the  doctor  went  in 
gently,  he  found  Nolan  had  breathed  his  life 
away  with  a  smile.  He  had  something  pressed 
close  to  his  lips.  It  was  his  father's  badge  of 
the  Order  of  the  Cincinnati. 


THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY.  45 

"  We  looked  in  his  Bible,  and  there  was  a  slip 
of  paper  at  the  place  where  he  had  marked  the 
text : — 

"'They  desire  a  country,  even  a  heavenly: 
wherefore  God  is  not  ashamed  to,be  called  their 
God :  for  he  hath  prepared  for  them  a  city.' 

"  On  this  slip  of  paper  he  had  written  :  — 

"  '  Bury  me  in  the  sea  ;  it  has  been  my  home, 
and  I  love  it.  But  will  not  some  one  set  up  a 
stone  for  my  memory  at  Fort  Adams  or  at  Orle 
ans,  that  my  disgrace  may  not  be  more  than  I 
ought  to  bear  ?  Say  on  it  :  — 

•''/>/   Memory  of 
'"PHILIP    NOLAN, 

"  '•Lieutenant  in  the  Army  of  the  United  States. 

"  '  He  loved  his  country  as  no  other  man  has  loved  her, 
but  no  man  deserved  less  at  her  hands.'  " 


WORKS  OF  EDWARD  E.  HALE, 


CHRISTMAS  IN  NARRAGANSETT. 

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OUR  CHRISTMAS  IN  A  PALACE. 

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This  ingeniously  wrought  story,  now  well  known,  first  appeared 
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LIFE   OF   COLONEL   JACK. 

By  DANIEL  DE  FOE.     Edited  by  EDWARD  E.  HALE. 

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slavery  in  Virginia.  $0.75;  $>v>p.,  $0.30. 

J.  STILMAN  SMITH  &  CO.,  Publishers,  Boston. 


A   NEW   SCHOOL   READER. 


Edward  Everett  Bale's  Patriotic  Story, 

"THE    MAN    WITHOUT    A    COUNTRY." 


This  little  book,  written  during  the  war,  and  intended 
to  assist  in  raising  the  standard  of  love  of  country  and 
true  patriotism,  is  well  fitted  for  the  study  of  our  young 
people  to-day. 

Its  pure  English  and  vivid  descriptions,  added  to 
its  patriotic  character,  make  it  eminently  a  fit  book  for 
supplementary  reading  in  grammar  and  high  schools. 

Printed  on  white  paper  with  clear  type,  and  bound  in 
attractive  covers  displaying  the  American  flag,  it  cannot 
fail  to  please. 

Cloth,   50  cents ;    board    covers,    25    cents ; 
paper    covers,    20    cents. 

Sent,  postpaid,  on  receipt  of  price. 
We  are  glad  to  send  sample  copies  to  superintendents 
or.  teachers  of  schools  for  1 5  cents. 

\Ve  make  a  liberal  discount  to  schools. 


J.    STILMAN     SMITH    &     CO., 

Publishers, 
3    Hamilton    Place,   Boston,   Mass. 


Lend  a  Hand  Monthly, 

A  JOURNAL  OF  ORGANIZED  PHILANTHROPY. 


EDWARD  E.  HALE,  D.D.,  Editor. 
JOHN  STILMAN  SMITH,  Manager. 


Subscription,  $2.00  a  Year*     Single  Numbers,  20  cents. 


This  Journal  has  been  established  by  the  persons  interested  in  organizec 
philanthropy  in  Boston,  New  York,  Brooklyn,  Philadelphia,  Pittsburg,  BaJti- 
more,  Washington,  Chicago,  and  other  cities.  Their  wish  is  to  make  a 
monthly  magazine  of  the  first  class,  which  may  meet  the  need  of  all  person? 
of  public  spirit  in  all  pans  of  the  United  States. 


"  IN    HIS    NAME." 

For  the  Wadsworth  Clubs,  or  any  of   the  orders   using  the  Wadswrrth 
Motto,  we  have  the  following:  — 

TEN  TIMES  ONE  IS  TEN  CLUBS  AND  LEND  A  HAM) 
CLUBS.  How  to  Begin.  By  EDWARD  E.  HALE,  D.D.  Paper,  16 

cents;  cioth,  25  cents.    , 

HARRY   WADSWORTH'S   MOTTO: 

Look  up  and  not  down,         , 
Look  forward  and  not  back, 
Look  out  and  not  in, 
And  Lend  a  Hand. 

\Ye   now   have   this  lithographed   in   handsome   form   for  club-rooms  and 
Sunday-school  rooms.     Size,  19  x  24  in.     40  cents. 

HOME  TEXTS  FOR  SUNDAY  SCHOOLS.  Size  14  x  22  inches. 
Thirty  sheets  in  each  roll.  These  texts  are  printed  in  large  capitals  on  fine 
paper.  65  cents. 

LEND  A  HAND  PLEDGE  CARDS.  25  cents  per  dozen;  $1.25 
per  hundred. 


BADGES  OR  MALTESE   CROSSES. 

I.  H.  N.  CHARMS,  silver-plated,  25  cents;  $2.75  per  dozen. 
I.  H.  N.  PINS,  silver-piated   25  cents;  $2.75  per  dozen. 
Same  styles  in  coin  silver,  40  cents  each ;  #4.50  per  dozen. 


J     STILMAN    SMITH    &    CO., 

3    Hamilton    Place, 

BOSTON,     MASS. 


GEORGE    KERCHEVAL'S 

INDIAN  STORIES. 

LORIN  MOOROCK. 

THREE  MEN  OF  WALLOWA. 
SAMUEL  AN  ARAPAHOE, 

By  GEORGE   TRUMAN  KERCHEVAL 
12mo.    160  pp.    In  one  volume.    Cloth,  75  rents;  Paper,  50  cento. 


These  wonderful  stories  have  aroused  wide  attention.  "  They 
will  take  place  with  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin '  and  '  Ramona.'  "  Com 
mended  by  BISHOP  WHIFFLE  and  EDWARD  E.  HALE. 


A  VOLUME   OF   POEMS. 
By  REBECCA  PALFREY  UTTER. 

PAPER,  40  rents         -         >         -          EXTRA   BINDING,  75   cents. 

J.  Stiliuoii  Smith  &  Co.,  Publishers,  Boston. 


DATE  DUE 


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